The Gettysburg Address

[Picaro]

What do you think lincoln meant here?

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can may revolutionize and make their own of so many of the territory as they inhabit."

Very straightforward and unambiguous, wouldn't you say? No hidden meaning..nothing complicated...unfortunately, he was a lying bastard.

That was pretty much the majority opinion of the day, and even after secession. Some people just don't like the historical record and need to invent another history.

 

[bendog]

I'd agree there was no clear cut answer. But your contention that the tenth clearly and unbiguously supports your position is just not true. First, whatever the tenth was intedended to do is only a limit on federal power. The fed govt may not exert unenumerated powers. Secession is not a federal action, but rather a state action.

Madison's view was once in, no way out without the federal govt.

What Madison Thought of Secession. - NYTimes.com

And that makes logical sense. The articles of confederation proved too weak to form a govt. So, they wanted a more powerful federal govt. but with limits. But, still, I don't think it's all that clear. Hamilton, the federalist, opined that for the federal govt to use force against a state would essentially make a mockery of the fed govt, but no state would intentionally place itself in a position where "coercion" would take place.

Legality of Secession

But that's exactly what SC did under Jackson and the South did in 1861.

 

[Unkotare]

You believe the federal government has the right to wage war against fellow citizens who no longer wish to be subjects of the government.

Anyone who wants to leave the US is free to do so. They are not free to seize US territory or wage war against the US as the Confederate traitors did.

 

[gipper]

They had no rights to ANY territory, whether they paid or not. It was United States territory
There are no provisions in the Constitution that they signed to leave the United States

They had rights to the territory that was encompassed within their state boundaries...and they attempted to PAY for the fort ANYWAY...but the lying bastard lincoln just HAD to have his war...

secession wasn't illegal. the 10th amendment proves that. The legislatures of the various confederate states voted and the proposition was approved honestly and legally.

The north had no legal right to invade sovereign territory no matter what the pretext..as lincoln said himself in his address to congress...which I will post AGAIN for you...

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can may revolutionize and make their own of so many of the territory as they inhabit."

The people of the south took the lying bastard at his word and followed the rules and tried to peacefully secede...lincoln sicced the war criminal sherman (and others) on them.

Where do you get the idea that the north "owned" the south or could "forbid" them from exercising their rights as free citizens to withdraw from the union?

Let me ask you again; Were the colonists in 1776 patriots or traitors?

The traitors fired on their own flag so that they could maintain the right to own another human being

No. They had their own national flag at this time.

They fired on the flag of the invaders of their homeland....and we already know the war wasn't fought to keep (or free) the slaves...

Secession was not legal. If it was, our Constitution would include provisions for both joining and leaving the union. As written, it only provides how a state joins the union

Only traitors take up arms against their country

The Constitution does not forbid secession, which means secession is legal. The Constitution grants rights to the government. Rights not explicated granted, are not legal.

It is that simple....DUMMY!

You continue to spout this BS, that states have no right to secede. It is an F**KING LIE! Stop LYING LIB!!!

Read this from the Great Walter Williams (your leaders refer to him as an Uncle Tom)
Learn something for ONCE!!!

For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

Since Barack Obama's re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitions for secession have reached the White House. Some people (INCLUDING FOOLS LIKE YOU!) have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there's absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let's look at the secession issue.

At the 1787 constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, "No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States."

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession.

Here's my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."

The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

There's more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
Parting Company by Walter E. Williams on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

 

[gipper]

The American Civil War was not a war of aggression by the North, but a response to an act of war by traitors in the South. The deaths of so many brave Americans - North and South - are on the ledgers of some few arrogant, selfish fools in the South. President Lincoln took some extra-Constitutional liberties for sure, but he did so to keep our Union in tact and (as became clear during the war if not entirely before) to settle an untenable contradiction in our Republic and the principles upon which it stands. That fucking scumbag FDR cannot claim anything even remotely the same.

You believe the federal government has the right to wage war against fellow citizens who no longer wish to be subjects of the government. To keep the Union intact, the government can murder any citizen who refuses to abide by it's laws and takes up arms to protect themselves from the government's military.

Lets say the Japanese Americans during WWII refused internment and peacefully sought to create their own nation within the USA, would the federal government have the right to murder them all, if they resisted?

All due respect, but the confederate states and their legislatures and citizens have more standing than isolated groups within a state claiming sovereignty like in your example with the japanese.

THAT would DEFINITELY be illegal.

but I've wandered off topic.

Agreed.

 

[gipper]

They had no rights to ANY territory, whether they paid or not. It was United States territory
There are no provisions in the Constitution that they signed to leave the United States

They had rights to the territory that was encompassed within their state boundaries...and they attempted to PAY for the fort ANYWAY...but the lying bastard lincoln just HAD to have his war...

secession wasn't illegal. the 10th amendment proves that. The legislatures of the various confederate states voted and the proposition was approved honestly and legally.

The north had no legal right to invade sovereign territory no matter what the pretext..as lincoln said himself in his address to congress...which I will post AGAIN for you...

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can may revolutionize and make their own of so many of the territory as they inhabit."

The people of the south took the lying bastard at his word and followed the rules and tried to peacefully secede...lincoln sicced the war criminal sherman (and others) on them.

Where do you get the idea that the north "owned" the south or could "forbid" them from exercising their rights as free citizens to withdraw from the union?

Let me ask you again; Were the colonists in 1776 patriots or traitors?

The traitors fired on their own flag so that they could maintain the right to own another human being

No. They had their own national flag at this time.

They fired on the flag of the invaders of their homeland....and we already know the war wasn't fought to keep (or free) the slaves...

Secession was not legal. If it was, our Constitution would include provisions for both joining and leaving the union. As written, it only provides how a state joins the union

Only traitors take up arms against their country

The only traitor to America are dumb asses like you.

 

[Picaro]

Here's my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."

Lincoln promptly suspended habeas corpus and had the Maryland legislature arrested after they voted on a resolution that supported peaceful secession.

 

[G.T.]

In todays united big pharma states of america "the south will rise again" sounds like a viagra commercial

 

[TheIceMan]

I'm just going to quote H. L. Mencken because he said it better than I ever could.

The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.

But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege.

- H.L. Mencken -​

Well said

The only problem with Mencken is that the Constitution of that government seeking self determination specifically prohibits any laws that impede the institution of slavery. The Confederacy was not looking for self determination, but the right to determine that others were subhuman and deserve to be property

Lincoln 1
Mencken 0

Incorrect. The Confederacy was obviously looking for the right to self-determination. The Union was looking to subjugate others to its will.

Lincoln's war was unconstitutional.

 

[Rotagilla]

You believe the federal government has the right to wage war against fellow citizens who no longer wish to be subjects of the government.

Anyone who wants to leave the US is free to do so. They are not free to seize US territory or wage war against the US as the Confederate traitors did.

No one seized any federal territory.
They reclaimed land and property that was in their own state...which they had democratically voted on and determined was not part of the federal union...along with 10 other states.... 1/3 of the country at the time.

Why are you against a people exercising their right to vote on the proposition, then peacefully secede and form their own government?

What did lincoln mean when he said this in Congress?


"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can may revolutionize and make their own of so many of the territory as they inhabit."

Were the colonists in 1776 "traitors"..or patriots?
Interesting that there were 13 colonies and 13 states that seceded...(11 originally)

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-


Is the declaration of independence and the revolutionary war the work of "traitors" or.... patriots?

 

[midcan5]

The South will never rise again so long as they fight a battle they lost and should have lost, all men are created equal.....

http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...ered-to-be-constitutional-19.html#post7490292


OMG, more apologies for slavery. Having just returned from a trip south I wonder sometimes. Remove slavery and there is no war, that has to be clear to everyone including revisionist apologists but is it? Some time ago I had a discussion on this with a nephew who was in a college in the South and I was surprised anyone who has read the literature would think this was about anything else. The best apology anyone can reasonably make is the 'Walmart Rational' - raising prices would ruin us - or freeing our slaves will ruin us. That's tongue in cheek but let me see what I can find in my DBs - links below:

"I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed. And since I was a boy, the answer I’ve heard to this question, from Virginia to Louisiana (from whites, never from blacks), is this: “The War Between the States was about states’ rights. It was not about slavery.”

I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.

But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19Ball.html

Links from above piece:
http://www.teachingushistory.org/lessons/Ordinance.htm
http://www.teachingushistory.org/pdfs/Transcription_002.pdf


'What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War'

"Chandra Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside the minds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern and Southern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation."

"Her conclusion is that the Americans who fought the Civil War overwhelmingly thought they were fighting about slavery, and that we should take their word for it." [ame]http://www.amazon.com/What-This-Cruel-War-Over/dp/0307277321[/ame]

"An Analysis Of President Lincoln's Legal Arguments Against Secession" http://apollo3.com/~jameso/secession.html

SCOTUS on secession: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/74/700

Admission of a State to the Union: http://constitution.findlaw.com/article4/annotation16.html#2

"A primary element of this Southern understanding of the Constitution was the right to secede. Nowhere does the original document confer the right to detach from the Union, but Southerners still found the act "entirely legitimate under the terms of the federal Constitution” (Cook 114). Perhaps one could construe the tenth amendment to grant such a right, but Article six states that all government officials must support "this Constitution,” which runs contrary to secession (U.S. Const. 6.0.3 and Am. 10, from Gienapp 435-6). Alexander Stevens used this principle as a premise in his argument against secession (59). Yet, despite this Constitutional opposition, or at least ambivalence, to secession, South Carolina declared that it had such a right. " (from above url)



.

 

[Rotagilla]

The South will never rise again so long as they fight a battle they lost and should have lost, all men are created equal.....

http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...ered-to-be-constitutional-19.html#post7490292

.

The south fought for independence from an oppressive fed govt.
Just like the patriots fought for independence from the oppressive king of england.

A noble and honorable attempt.

The south may not "rise" as an entity, but this country is going to collapse and new boundaries will be drawn and loyalties challenged.

Think of the "Balkans" ......except with even more violence.

 

[Rotagilla]

The South will never rise again so long as they fight a battle they lost and should have lost, all men are created equal.....

http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...ered-to-be-constitutional-19.html#post7490292


OMG, more apologies for slavery. Having just returned from a trip south I wonder sometimes. Remove slavery and there is no war, that has to be clear to everyone including revisionist apologists but is it? Some time ago I had a discussion on this with a nephew who was in a college in the South and I was surprised anyone who has read the literature would think this was about anything else. The best apology anyone can reasonably make is the 'Walmart Rational' - raising prices would ruin us - or freeing our slaves will ruin us. That's tongue in cheek but let me see what I can find in my DBs - links below:

"I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed. And since I was a boy, the answer I’ve heard to this question, from Virginia to Louisiana (from whites, never from blacks), is this: “The War Between the States was about states’ rights. It was not about slavery.”

I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.

But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19Ball.html

Links from above piece:
"An Ordiance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other states," or the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, South Carolina, 1860
http://www.teachingushistory.org/pdfs/Transcription_002.pdf


'What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War'

"Chandra Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside the minds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern and Southern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation."

"Her conclusion is that the Americans who fought the Civil War overwhelmingly thought they were fighting about slavery, and that we should take their word for it." What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Vintage): Chandra Manning: 9780307277329: Amazon.com: Books

"An Analysis Of President Lincoln's Legal Arguments Against Secession" http://apollo3.com/~jameso/secession.html

SCOTUS on secession: Texas v. White | LII / Legal Information Institute

Admission of a State to the Union: Annotation 16 - Article IV - FindLaw

"A primary element of this Southern understanding of the Constitution was the right to secede. Nowhere does the original document confer the right to detach from the Union, but Southerners still found the act "entirely legitimate under the terms of the federal Constitution” (Cook 114). Perhaps one could construe the tenth amendment to grant such a right, but Article six states that all government officials must support "this Constitution,” which runs contrary to secession (U.S. Const. 6.0.3 and Am. 10, from Gienapp 435-6). Alexander Stevens used this principle as a premise in his argument against secession (59). Yet, despite this Constitutional opposition, or at least ambivalence, to secession, South Carolina declared that it had such a right. " (from above url)



.

Revisionist claptrap...The New York Times?..LMAO..Chandra Manning?


Of course slavery was mentioned...it was an issue the north wanted to keep hammering, so the south responded.
The north want/wanted to change the subject and frame the situation to make themselves look noble and "moral".

If the damned war was to "free the slaves", why did lincoln wait 3 years after the war started? Why didn't he "free" them on the first day?

Everyone knew that slavery was dying and would eventually fade away.

The industrial revolution had begun and if a farmer could have a machine that did the work of 20 farm animals in half the time and didn't need to be housed or fed...who would even WANT slaves?


Here are quotes from the time by people who were actually involved...not some revisionist liberal "professor" from Georgetown trying to sell her books.



"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils....The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel".... Charles Dickens in a London periodical in December 1861

"The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South....". ..... London Times of 7 Nov 1861

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation"..... North American Review (Boston October 1862)

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." ..... New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow." .... Chicago Daily Times December 1860

"At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States." ..... NY Times 22 March 1861

"the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...." .... Boston Transcript 18 March 1861

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. "
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Gustavus Fox, May 1, 1861

"The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy.... If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces [the US ship The Harriet Lane, and seven other reinforcement ships], had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished." ~ The Buffalo Daily Courier, April 16, 1861.

"We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.... We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding.... Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it." ~ The New York Evening Day-Book, April 17, 1861.



Chandra Manning?..LMAO..Seriously?

 

[G.T.]

Nobody is skurred of your phony violent fantasies

 

[TheIceMan]

Nobody is skurred of your phony violent fantasies

He's almost correct. Before Texas v White in 1868, nothing legally precluded secession.

 

[Rotagilla]

Nobody is skurred of your phony violent fantasies

Right...Try to deflect and distract.

Don't address the topic.

ANYTHING but that....

 

[G.T.]

"Think of the balkans, except with even MORE violence"

You said it. Its a fanatical fantasy.

 

[JWBooth]

I'm just going to quote H. L. Mencken because he said it better than I ever could.

The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.

But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege.

- H.L. Mencken -​

Well said

The only problem with Mencken is that the Constitution of that government seeking self determination specifically prohibits any laws that impede the institution of slavery. The Confederacy was not looking for self determination, but the right to determine that others were subhuman and deserve to be property

Lincoln 1
Mencken 0

Yet Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation specifically exempted those areas under Federal control from freeing the first slave.

Only points scored are for rhetoric.

 

[Rotagilla]

"Think of the balkans, except with even MORE violence"

You said it. Its a fanatical fantasy.

Civil war/revolution is always ugly..That's no "fantasy", that's real.

What's your point, anyway?

 

[G.T.]

"Think of the balkans, except with even MORE violence"

You said it. Its a fanatical fantasy.

Civil war/revolution is always ugly..That's no "fantasy", that's real.

What's your point, anyway?

That there's no civil war coming. Pack up your balls and go home.